Anybody seen the Mayak satellite yet?

here's how it actually looks like

Kek, makes sense why Heavens-above is only saying it's a magnitude -1
That hair thin trace. Well memed.

Just a gigantic waste of money.
Unless, of course, it was actually designed to launder the money paid to them for hacking the U.S. election.

how does shit like this happen?
especially if other professionals tried to say something, how can you fuck up this badly?

We do have the math and astronomy knowledge to do this right dont we?

>Just a gigantic waste of money.
Well not exactly gigantic, it was about $80K total, including $35K of crowdfunding. It's just an amateur 1U balloon cubesat.

>how does shit like this happen?
It's an average crowdfunding campaign, kek.

What was the supposed purpose? Orbit is full of satellites that are visible to the naked eye, there is no need for another if the only point was to be visible.

Poccия cильнaя

>geektimes.ru/post/270570/#comment_9016730

Interesting, thanks for posting this. I do not speak Russian, so had to rely on a translation site, so likely missed some of it. But still, interesting -- they seemed totally unable t comprehend that their math was way off, and that they might have some responsibility to honestly describe the effect of what they wanted to launch to investors.

I wonder if some sort of tighter controls of what sort of nonsense people send into orbit is worth putting in place. This one sounds like it will deorbit quickly (unless they fucked up THAT math, too) but who knows what other stupid shit some crowd-funded hoax might put up.

Looks like a regular satellite. When I was a child in the 1980s, I lived on a farm in BFE. I'd lay out in the field and watch satellites pass by; though they were not streaks. Instead they looked like a bright point moving slowly. I didn't know what they were at the time. It was really neat. Now, light pollution and computer eyesight have taken that away.

Easy come easy go

Yeah, ground reports aren't promising

Just saw it about an hour ago Way less bright than predicted. Heavens above pegged it at -1.0, but it was certainly much less than that. Saw it pass by Cassiopia and I could barely see it in a somewhat light polluted suburban setting

Nah

I want to believe

it's supposed to shine brighter than anything else in the sky and make the people look upwards

> I wonder if some sort of tighter controls of what sort of nonsense people send into orbit is worth putting in place.
No amount of regulation will stop fools from being foolish. In this case, too much unrelated regulations had to click at the same time, supposing they even existed at all.

> This one sounds like it will deorbit quickly (unless they fucked up THAT math, too) but who knows what other stupid shit some crowd-funded hoax might put up.
There's no point stopping dumb people from wasting their money. This particular cubesat wasn't dangerous at all, of course they have to pass a mandatory assessment and all sorts of testing, to be sure that some student-made satellite won't crash the rocket or blow up in orbit.

afaik the rules for what you can and cannot bring on a cubesat are already pretty strict

you can't bring a chemical rocket engine or anything that can burn, for one

>taking a PR stunt seriously

What about the "we don't actually need lots more fucking trash in orbit, so cubesats that have no worthwhile purpose or that are too poorly designed to achieve that purpose (this one looks like it would have failed both tests) stay on the ground.

But the sky is thick with satellites, many of which are naked-eye objects Not sure why THIS one was supposed to make a bigger splash.

They KNEW it was not going to be as bright as they hoped, it was explained to them in a conversational series of posts on a site linked above.

Cubesats have very strict debris regulations and typically deorbit after a few months. One with such a large cross section is going to come down quicker, even at 600km starting altitude.